


Bluebeard's Wife

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Series: Grim Tales [3]
Category: Prince Lestat - Fandom, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Antoine POV, Bedroom Boardroom, Consorts - Freeform, Cynicism, M/M, Meanwhile in Auvergne, Multiple Partners, Nostalgia, Post PL, Power Imbalance, This Is Fine, Unhealthy Relationships, naivete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 14:16:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10414029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: Take care when entering your master's chambers, lest you discover the corpses of his old loves.Take more care yet if he fears not the revelation.





	

**Author's Note:**

> No archive warnings are used, as with the previous story in the series, yet there are aspects which could be triggering depending on reader interpretation. See end note for more detail.

Everything about the lordly halls of the Auvergne castle screamed to Antoine that he shouldn't be there. He was the family castoff, an exile to the no-longer-New World, and part of him waited for the bones of his parents to spring up from the ground and cast him out (never mind that they were dead miles and miles away and lain in ignoble, untended graves). He'd come with his violin and his memories of Trinity Gate and little else, and that was another thing he lacked--he had no noble history to tell like those around him. Rather, he was a footnote in someone else's tale, and he was content with that. 

But Lestat kept telling him he was wanted there, and that was the strangest thing of all: Lestat, who years and years ago had told him to wait a little longer, just a little longer, as he pressed blank pieces of parchment into Antoine's hands and commanded he write, or play, and Antoine had obeyed for fear of what might happen if he didn't. It wasn't that Lestat could've killed him. The far worse horror had been the thought that his mercurial benefactor might leave.

He'd envied Louis, then. He’d been bitter at the undeserved love poor Lestat bore for that icy, nervous hypochondriac. Now, he thought he understood.

There was a terror of loss in loving a wonder like their Prince; why shouldn't Louis have been frightened, defensive, grasping -- though you could never really hold someone like that. Could never earn it.

Could lose it.

Could find it again, older and wiser, gaze like a blue gas flame heating Antoine's cheeks.

Lestat had met him in the grand entrance hall and taken his hands. 

"Welcome home," he'd said, and laughed as Antoine tripped over his own tongue. He had never been eloquent, not once. It'd suited him in the western territories, where they assumed him stoic. And for Lestat he could play his music, first the piano that he loved and then the violin because Lestat had asked it. He'd been grateful for that in the end, when it had ended up a key that opened Trinity Gate. 

There was a little pang in his chest at the thought of Benji's broadcasts far away. At the thought of Sybelle, with her long, elegant hands and music a thousand times more beautiful than he could ever produce. She had spoken so little Antoine could almost count the times on his hands, and yet she had expressed great multitudes that left him breathless. 

The quick pang became an ache, and he forced himself not to think about it. When Lestat was around it made things easy--that dazzling smile had always obliterated what passed for his good sense, and the merest glance could melt him on the spot. 

(They'd never--not since the night he was made, and then almost out of necessity. And since… He'd been alone so long. Surely this was better.)

And Louis smiled, too. A beat behind their love, but sweet. Friendly. He'd always been a consummate host even back then, when every visit was consummated by Lestat in a darkened corner. Antoine had believed when Lestat said his kept man would come around, and lo and behold. The one truth.

Antoine had taken to watching Louis during their time in Trinity Gate--at first to see if he truly had been forgiven, and then in pure fascination. He could see what Lestat had loved. Though Louis rarely spoke casually, Antoine had seen him drawn into long verbal sparring matches with Armand and Benji, rarely raising his voice and more rarely giving ground. He knew Lestat loved rebels and spirited souls. 

He hadn't seen Louis speak much in the time since he'd arrived, though. Maybe, he thought, the shock was still great for all of them; even a pair that had weathered so many storms. Vampires he had seen briefly, ancient and ominous, were coming and going almost constantly. Lestat's mother frightened him in particular, often fixing him with a piercing, wordless stare that cut him to the quick. He felt naked under that scrutinizing gaze.

Lestat laughed at him then, too. "She's late to be frightening my choice in lovers." And he'd put his arm around Antoine's shoulders as the young vampire (youngest in the castle by far, but for the rare sight of that lovestruck honeymooning couple) blushed. 

"Do you really want me?" 'Here,' he'd meant to say, but instead he left it as it was. He was tired of scurrying from unwanted place to unwanted place, alternately fearing and craving death. 

"More than you could know." Lestat had kissed him roughly, and Antoine had thought he might die. Could, certainly, in those marble-hard hands powered by the very Source of them all.

He'd been a magnificent lover, from what Antoine recalled. Passionate and alien, tender and savage. Giver of a shuddering pleasure the likes of which he'd never known, half the bite and half love.

And Louis--with the prejudice of dislike torn away, Antoine could see the appeal. He was so very lovely. And intelligent. He'd learned that to keep a soul like Lestat, he'd need to be more permissive. Flexible.

How flexible Louis looked, sprawled upon a gold velvet couch older than either of them, eyes trained upon (of all things) a Magic Eye photo book.

Lestat caught him looking, and for a second Antoine was terrified at the almost reptilian shift in those blue-grey eyes. And then it was all passion, hands creeping up his back to bend him at unnatural angles, poses that would have broken mortal bones. For "poses" were what they were, evoked for their ever-present-not-present third. Was it still cuckoldy, he wondered as Lestat grabbed his hands and pinned them, if the spouse was free to see what went on--and if they did nothing?

"Lestat," Louis' voice was languorous and long, his accent ever so slightly heavier. "Must you carry on that way here?"  As though the books would be insulted.

"It's my castle, is it not?" His breath was warm against Antoine's cheek, and who knew how many had died to achieve that effect (none, none, there were rules now; it was only that Lestat’s thirst seemed unslakable to anything but death, utter submission). His voice was music nonetheless.

"Your palace, even." Louis smile was soft around the edges, his movements between fluid and clumsy for one of their ilk, as he rolled onto his belly and kicked his feet up. "But must you here? You've entire suites of rooms."

He dressed so well, impeccably suited always to his appearance. Pants flattering to his trim hips and waist, but not vulgar. Sweaters fine-knit and soft and slinky, tight about his chest and shoulders and smooth flat belly. Gems here and there, bracelets and rings and necklaces, nothing speared through his flesh like the barbaric children of the present wore them. It was like the hazy image Antoine kept from his last mortal years, every bit as precise even if the fashion had changed.

"You're being cruel," Lestat spoke as his fingertips traced Antoine's hipbones and up the soft trail of hair below his navel. "You told me you forgave us our trespasses. Am I still in need of penance?"

Antoine was embarrassed, still, to think of his private thoughts,  the raw wound of his desperation, splashed across the page. He'd known it would be but it hadn't prepared him for seeing it in print, in the hands of his fellows. They felt for him, Lestat had said. They saw his tragic soul. Lestat would know. 

Lestat...was very distracting, sinking now to his knees in mockery of dead piety and kissing the inside of Antoine's thigh. In a moment of madness Antoine wanted him to bite into that pulsing artery, to see his blood spatter across the carpet until he became the shriveled thing he'd found in the swamp, and maybe he'd really be forgiven then.

"It's not seemly, Lestat. And besides--" He froze when Lestat grinned, silent in the face of that rebellious, authoritative presence.

"What?" the Prince asked.

"Nothing." His silken hair, darker than Antoine's and shining like molten tar, fell to hide his face as it had so often when ribbons failed late into an evening when the party had drunk half a barge worth of liquor. How Louis had managed--well, Antoine had played at bars and discotheques for a reason. It was simple enough.

"No." Hands were iron on Antoine’s hips, even with Lestat's face turned away, tense shoulders heavy with more-than-mortal strength. "Do tell, my love."

"It's--rude. Cruel. Your court will know; can you not treat dear Antoine with respect? Properly?"

"So kind of you, my dear." Antoine thought to scream when those hands left him entirely, when they grasped a fragile jaw and forced contact with a bottle-green gaze. "But surely it would shame you, were I to take another in our very bed."

If that were true, then Antoine was in violation twice over. Seeing them together, his knees shook and threatened to collapse.

"You abolished shame in one of your grand decrees, I'm sure." It should've been playful, and Louis was smiling as he spoke, but something felt off nonetheless. "I'm afraid you've left me with nothing."

"I'm sorry," Antoine whispered, thinking of that first night after so many years. The relief of no longer being alone. And here Louis was alone now, even among company. He faltered,  stumbled to his knees as he approached, and all but crawled the last few feet. "Louis, forgive me. I didn't think, I--"

"A common ailment among our kind." Louis' hand, warmer than Antoine might've suspected. touched his cheek. And Lestat, who had been watching him with curiosity, laughed. 

"Like looking in a mirror," he said, though Antoine knew he and Louis looked nothing alike. No one would be composing odes to him. "I knew it, I knew."

"Hmm." Lazy, sleepy, the way Louis' eyelids curtained the supposed portals to his soul. Languid, how he stretched his body without disrupting the hands upon him. "Do tell, Lestat. What did you know?"

"Ah, mon chaton." His voice and manner were refined Colony sugar as he drew Louis in for a kiss, white and sweet until with a jolt Louis seized and moaned, nipples showing through his thin sweater, muscles tense, eyes squeezed shut. Molasses, when they pulled apart, dark and primitive with blood on their lips. "I know how you need, and cannot bring yourself to ask."

"You," Louis was panting, his cheeks faintly pink. "You're ignoring your guest." 

"It's alright." Antoine was already trying to backpedal, the ache in his chest redoubled. "I'll go." 

"There's no need." Lestat caught his wrist, and there was no fighting that touch. "I made you a promise, my lost darling. I haven't forgotten."

There was still blood on Lestat's lips, blood that sang and choked Antoine with only a few drops. The blood of mortals was nothing; even Lestat's blood from years ago was nothing compared to this (and he had precious little to compare). His eyes rolled back in his head, a shudder coursing through him as broad, calloused hands held him up. He thought he saw Lestat biting his lip, but he must've imagined it. When Antoine blinked, the image of hesitance was gone.

"It seems I've become a bit much for you." Lestat's voice was tinged with sadness, which ebbed away as his eyes turned devious. "I think our friend might better fit your tastes." 

Antoine looked at Louis, who was watching them with still-unfocused eyes, as if he were trying to see the hidden picture in their arrangement. "I couldn't..."

"The 19th century is long past, my dear friend." Lestat was drawing him in, mouthing his pulse. "You only need the right encouragement. I know you'll adore it."

'It' was beyond adorable, beyond compare, and the fear of death sparked in Antoine with every gentle suck and press at his throat. He'd been meant to die, so long ago, and Lestat had killed him. Saved him.

Death and passion were close, for their kind. Passion and fear. Surely that was why Louis' eyes widened, yet his body shifted. He sat up with long legs spread, welcoming, a signal Antoine would have understood even in life. Louis looked past him, surely to see Lestat, their maker, and were they siblings in this? He wondered as he moved closer, one knee to the thick cushion between Louis' legs, the other to the outside of one hip.

Were they brothers?

Louis might know. Louis had started it all with that book, and with his questions. He'd built the stage Lestat had graced.   _ Are we kin? _ Antoine imagined asking, and imagined too Louis sneering at him.

Naturally, if they were brothers, then Lestat was their father. Father of them all, now. Were they being watched by even more ancient eyes? He was afraid to ask, frightened of what the wrath of that potent blood might look like even as Lestat had assured them Amel was docile now.

Louis smelled like old books and soft rain, little remnants of Trinity Gate that shouldn't have survived the cold and the distance and the heated eyes watching them. It was that as much as the hunger that drove him to bite down, chasing a glimpse of that gentle and happy place, and the warped memory of his and Sybelle's music. 

Pain bloomed along his shoulder, and suddenly he was dizzy, the memories he was chasing and the thick, drunken heaviness beneath them stolen from him almost as soon as he could catch a taste. It was an impossible sensation, and he felt his mind begin to unmoor itself. A hand gently petted his hair.

And beneath his lips there was flesh, and beneath that flesh parted by his fangs, blood. Blood rich and sweet, intoxicating; smoky as Kentucky bourbon, and as painful going down Antoine's throat. His throat hadn't hurt from love since before Lestat took him in, spared him those frantic, dirty acts, but this was…

He saw things, there in the blood; love, imperfect and painful as Lestat had never described it, as Louis had never revealed it. Struggling and hurt and longing. Fear, fear of interlopers, fear of himself; a replacement, younger and prettier and more talented. Talented at all--Louis had heard his music. Vibrant and active, not some melancholy wreck.

Desirable, not domestic.

Not tied to a daughter.

He wondered if Louis could see him in return: hidden from sight even by those who found him useful, desperate and hungry in more ways than he could count, made for dusty corners and barren plains. He tried to say so, to scream it like a raw psychic wound, his ability to project his only real talent now. 

That, and he could learn. 

His hands (musician's hands, how Lestat had marveled at his hands and raged at him for getting into bar fights) carefully cupped Louis' jaw, stroked his cheek, trying to play the mixed muddle of melody in and out and around him. He thought he heard, so softly it might have been another memory, a sigh. 

He was being pulled away, glutted and yet more empty than he'd started, Lestat's hands on him, Lestat reaching through him to pull Louis up and guide him to the blood Antoine wasn't strong enough for as he slumped, dazed, between them. Forgotten.

Not forgotten, though, for Louis' smooth, neat hands (no calluses save from a pen; nothing like his own) clutched at  _ him _ , not at Lestat, pulled his hips close-close-mortal-close, as though they might do even that.

It felt like that, with Lestat pressed against his back and Louis writhing beneath him, pinned against the arm of the couch. The back of his long neck was flushed, each vertebrae visible like a cord of pearls beneath the skin. His ears were red, when Antoine dared slide a hand up and move that black silken curtain aside. Even his cheeks, flushed, hollowed over the bones with each deep suck. He looked distraught, face twisting like a mortal's during the act, and Antoine could not help but press a kiss to the healing spot where his mouth had been so recently.

Louis' voice was beautiful music of its own, giving the smallest hitch as Antoine touched his skin, and he chased that gentlest encouragement, pressing feather-soft kisses wherever he could reach within the cage of implacable arms holding them both. 

When Louis released his grasp--when Lestat allowed him to let go, falling back himself against the couch with a dazed expression--it was Antoine who caught him, who had the private chance to marvel at the shudders still passing through that form. It felt as if he held a holy thing, and when that hand once more stroked his hair he couldn't be sure if the grief in his chest was his own.

Louis looked at him, reading him.  _ Thank you _ , Antoine thought hurriedly, as if he couldn't feel his fangs aching in his mouth. They both looked so thoroughly exhausted, so satisfied, he didn't dare mention the lingering hunger.

But their Prince had chosen so well, his consort beautiful and  _ kind _ after all the centuries their people had to grow cruel. Sensitive, Louis always had been--a surfeit of sensibility, making him limp and melancholic and so very feeling even back then, So girlish in his nature and observations.

His shoulders and chest were dead white, not the tanned shade Lestat bore from his frequent journeys into the sun. More like Antoine; unnatural to see, but beautiful. He dropped his fine sweater of some exotic wool to the floor as though it meant less than nothing, either to own it or to shrug it off and expose himself to the waist.

"You need it, don't you?" Green eyes burned, and Antoine's tongue was so thick. Useless. If only he could play his music always, answer every question with it, like with Sybelle back home.

"N-no," he managed, though his teeth hurt and his stomach churned at the sight of so much vulnerable skin with sparse black hairs, the smell of smeared-drying- _ wasted _ blood. "No, I'm fine."

"You're not." Louis was solemn, thumb skating down Antoine's cheek and coming to rest on his shaking lips; it was all he could do not to snap like an animal.

"We shouldn't. You've already given me so much..."

Sadness, like a cloud covering the moon.

_ It would please him, Antoine, to see us so. He would enjoy watching you _ .

It had to be a kindness, that. For all that he was allowed here, eyed with some small and special awe as the Prince's Fledgling (a rare number among thousands), he was still waiting. Waiting for his dismissal to come, the same as when he'd composed until his body had refused to move, when he'd played and played until his wrists ached and his fingers bled. He wanted to be useful, always, and fend off the clutching gloom that threatened his idle hours.

He moved by inches, lowering his head to that pale chest, kissing the spot where that dead heart still beat. 

_ Go on _ , Louis was telling him, gripping his chin when Antoine tried to glance back to their audience.  _ Here _ . One glass nail split the skin just below Louis' collarbone, and Antoine thought he might go mad again at the sight.

(They all went mad, the young ones. It was practically a rite of passage)

It tasted strange on his tongue. Mixed, full of flashes from their Maker's mind; such pleasure at the sight of them pressed so close that they must surely meld into one. Their blood, their minds, mixing, and the  _ passion _ with which they touched, so near-human sexual--with their eyes screwed shut and their heads flung back in abandon, they had looked like two halves of a predetermined whole.

It stung; it burned, the heat of that admixture. And under it was the smoky sweetness Antoine had tasted earlier, but unbalanced, unguarded.

_ Drunk _ , the word floated up. A vagrant, earlier in the evening, granting a measure of loose calm when Louis felt things moving towards a tipping point. Felt eyes on him, and on another, saw the clothing chosen; slimming and easy to remove. Heard Lestat invite Antoine to the study to "visit" when Louis had already told of his own plans for the night.

Sensible. Sensual. Drowning himself in dazzling warping images, tricking his vampire eyes into seeing what wasn't there, stopping the reeling thoughts.

And still Louis gasped and bucked, urged Antoine on with hand in his hair.

"Yes--Yes, that's--"

Music, music, Antoine pushed back with ideas of sounds frenetic and chaotic, things to scramble both their ears and minds.

There was no grand climax in vampirism but death, an impossibility with others of their kind. Woozy, on fire from the gentle coaxing, Antoine wanted nothing more than to savage his own throat and lay himself bare to Louis, to make that unceasing link written of so-reverently on the page (there had been no give and take for him, hearing Lestat's call and being near overcome with the urge to flee from the creature he saw; reptilian, still marked by the murk of the swamps.  _ This is not my Lestat _ , he had thought at the time.  _ This monster has stolen my Lestat _ . And he had been a vampire that night, born from the thin blood his maker could spare. Weak among weaklings).

He wept, burying his face in the curve of Louis' neck and suddenly sick at heart. Where was his Lestat? His mind cried, his tolerance and once-iron liver now no match for even the thirdhand stuff in Louis' blood. 

_ Hush now. None of that _ . Louis was licking his tears and kissing the fragile fringe of his eyelids. Aloud, he said, "I know it wounds you to be parted from him. It was the same for me."

Truth, he felt truth--pain at being separated from something beloved and safe.

And this Lestat, the Lestat they had, stretched and smiled something so like the lovely sunshine he'd once brought into every room with him, when Antoine lived. This Lestat's eyes glowed with pride and contentment, no complicated worries of how to balance his wandering heart with his beloved family. This Lestat had it all, leaning back against the arm of the couch and running the toe of his boot idly up Antoine's leg.

_ Were they brothers in this? Were they kin? _

Could the thing inside Lestat beam so delightedly?

They didn't change over time. Not to look at.

But oh, Louis bled still, within, pain at being parted from what his eyes lied and told him he recognized.

Antoine brushed his hair away from his face, shaking and unsteady. "Let me play for you." He looked to Lestat, but he said it for Louis. And for himself. What would his music say about all this? What would it tell him? 

"There'll be time for that. Plenty of time." Lestat was reaching for him, and Antoine flinched away. He stood. 

"Please. Let me." There were instruments all around the house, great aspirations for eternity. He'd heard of Nokter's music school, but the thought of going there was even more frightful- he'd be a tall weed among preserved angels. 

The air hung with a pregnant pause, and Antoine held breath he didn't need. He saw Louis stirring himself, preparing to speak, when Lestat stretched like a great cat and smiled. "If you really must." Still wearing that pleased grin he stretched across the couch and lay between Louis' legs. flicking his tongue out to catch stray drops of blood as he rested his head on his fledgling's chest. Louis' hand found Lestat's like a reflex, the other entangling itself in Lestat's long ponytail. And those verdant eyes watched, waiting to see what Antoine would do. 

There was a piano in the library--Antoine thought of Louis' mind, and the suspicion that it was all arranged, and found no matter how he tried he couldn't put the thought away--and Antoine sat in it. He knew Lestat preferred to hear him at the violin, but this felt appropriate. It felt necessary.

He'd been able to play blind drunk and fucked boneless, once. Before that, he'd been the model of good habits; perfect posture, back and wrists and legs just so. It was a measure of respect.   
He closed his eyes, inhaled like his audience was filled with more people less important than those who stared at him now. And when his fingers touched the ancient keys, ivory you couldn't get now but permitted due to grandfathering, he felt the song within.

Apology, grief and longing and daring, flowed out into the air. And mixed with it--not forgiveness. Absolution. Pain undeniable and present, keen as a knife, but blameless.

He kept his eyes squeezed shut, clamped his teeth down upon his lower lip. Lestat could hear him, but he couldn't Hear him. Not that anyone understood his music, really, save for Sybelle--and he wouldn't play this for her.

(Armand's love of Sybelle had confused Antoine, the way their small benefactor had listened to the music while not feeling a note of it. His love for Louis had seemed similar, distanced but keen.)

The notes became a minor key, a sour and discordant sound of loss he didn't have words for. Loss for the sleek baby grand in Benji's studio, and for the lights of Manhattan, and for his ramshackle apartments in New Orleans and for everyone he knew who was dead. He'd never really played music for himself--his emotions poured out like a cry, and yet as a vampire he Heard the voices around him stronger than his own, their emotions stronger than his own, until the music was the only way to guide him back to who he was. 

Had Lestat done that? Had Lestat meant to make him like Louis, a perfect twin? 

Louis. 

Louis was watching him, and when Antoine saw it his hands faltered and crashed. Lestat was clapping for him, proclaiming his music a treatise on loneliness, a dead loneliness for all humanity and all their kind before they had found a way to come together, but Antoine hadn't played for everyone. He'd played for himself, and Sybelle, who would never hear the melody already fading from his thoughts. For Louis.

Antoine had been in love with their Prince for so long. He'd loved Lestat when he didn't remember his own name. Had lived for him, risen for him, so many times, heart torn in sympathy. Now--now he was not in love with their court's Consort, and it was somehow worse for that. He found Louis beautiful and kind, but the  _ desire _ for that person was lacking, for he'd had his fill of cloying poison.

And Louis deserved one who would love him. Properly. Who was observant, and distant, and utterly keen.

Lestat, wonderful Lestat who so loved his evil and the Devil's Road he tempted them onto with choices, was looking at Louis' book now, hair shining and expression heedless. And he was permitted to do so--no flinch touched Louis' half-clothed form, no revulsion touched his mind. He loved their Prince, who had put them in this room together.

What would have happened, Antoine wondered, if he had refused his maker at last, when that thing crawled from the swamp into his home, crying murder and betrayal?

Would he have lost what made him special, if he'd refused to serve his purpose? He could see it almost perfectly, that monstrous wraith pouncing on him as he had done to so many unfortunates for whom Antoine had played, daring him over and over to run. 

He hadn't. He'd always lacked good sense.

"I think I need to sleep." It was, strictly speaking, true. He'd always had a much shorter time to be awake than any other vampire he'd yet met. 

"I'll come to you tomorrow." Lestat held out his hand to beckon Antoine in, kissing him long and slow. And even now, even now, feeling Louis' eyes on them, his toes curled in his shoes.

"Tomorrow," he repeated.

"Wait for me!" Lestat called mocking after him, as if Antoine had nowhere else to go. As if he had no idea what to do with himself without that guiding light.

That was, of course, right.

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains a series of sex acts which seem on the surface to be consensual, but due to power dynamics and outside concerns, are for one party not motivated by anything resembling lust or desire. This is not immediately apparent to another participant.


End file.
